• by Erik Sass , March 3, 2008

Arbitron's Portable People Meter suffered another setback in January when the Media Rating Council refused to give accreditation to the electronic measurement system in New York and Philadelphia. The news follows last week's decision by Nielsen to end its partnership with Arbitron for Project Apollo, which used PPM data to link consumer purchases to ad message exposure.

The dual rejections were revealed by Arbitron in its annual 10-K filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 28.

In an official statement, Arbitron said the decisions not to grant accreditation were based on old field audits, holding out the hope that the MRC would grant accreditation after new field audits that are already underway. Since the earlier audits, the company has taken measures to improve participation by panel members, boosting sample sizes--probably one of the key issues behind the MRC's rejections.

The MRC's deliberations about companies and products are confidential, and the organization usually doesn't share information with the public. The semi-official industry body was established at the behest of Congress in 1964 to maintain standards in media ratings.

In November, Clear Channel Radio, Cumulus Media, Cox Radio and Radio One Inc. sent a letter to Arbitron listing problems with PPM and demanding remedies. Specifically, the broadcasters demanded that Arbitron meet its in-tab sample targets for all age segments in the 18-54 range and all ethnicities, including African-Americans and Hispanics.

Broadcasters that target minority audiences, like Radio One, have been especially critical of PPM results, saying Arbitron's failure to meet its sample-size targets among African-Americans led to precipitous drops in their ratings. Last year, Jim Winston, head of the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters, noted that "the samples in both Philadelphia and Houston for this demo have been consistently and substantially below the proportion of the population represented by this demo, and substantially below the sample size Arbitron set for itself to reach."

These complaints prompted Arbitron to push back its date for commercializing PPM ratings in a slew of major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas, by periods of three to nine months.